Beholder: In addition to a team Gold medal and the title of Olympic champions,
GM Valentina Gunina and
GM Alexandra Kosteniuk won individual Gold medals for the best performance of the Olympiad on the 2nd and 3rd board, respectively.

cro777: All the time during the Chess Olympiad, Natalia Pogonina's teammates used to jokingly bug her with asking for some excerpts from her book "Chess Kama Sutra" (about the connection between chess and sex) which will explain th "love theory" of chess. The idea that there is a way to apply ideas about sex to improve chess skills, and vice versa seems very attractive. Will this book ever be published?

Pogonina: "Frankly speaking, I am not sure whether this book will ever be finalized and published or not. Peter Zhdanov, my husband and co-author, is more interested in this kind of research."

<However, the organization of the Chess Olympiad itself left a lot to be desired. I don’t want to go into details, but it is enough to point out that two chess players/participants died during the Olympiad’2014. This is very sad.>

Octavia: <two chess players/participants died during the Olympiad’2014.> When you have thousands of people gathered in one space it's kinda normal that some should die especially if lots of them are old - look up statistics .

The Aussies were 51 & improved, the Scots were 52 & did badly in the last 2 rds & dropped. Its may be not a good idea to play in all the rds as Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant did.

Beholder: <Octavia: <two chess players/participants died during the Olympiad’2014.> When you have thousands of people gathered in one space it's kinda normal that some should die especially if lots of them are old - look up statistics.>

waustad: Except for some rather vague and scurrilous comments, the only real concrete problem anybody mentioned was that to keep the top boards from roasting the bottom boards were quite cold. Adding TV lighting might have been more than the environmental controls could handle for the entire space.

HeMateMe: Sounds like the organizers don't know how to set up plastic tunnels to a cold environment, with Velcro doors at multiple locations, to keep out the cold. That's what restaurants do at winter time--slap together a module plastic tunnel, with two or three transparent doors to enter the facilities, to keep out gusts of wind.Combine that with some portable electric space heaters, and the playing hall becomes toasty warm.

Not much one can do however for a cool trip outside to use the porta potties. 170 countries and not enough bathrooms.

waustad: Ah yes, plumbing issues. I remember playing in the Cardinal Open where there was a little stage where the GMs hung out, but with 500 people, all of them nervous, the bathrooms were busy. The gender mix was very different from the olympiad, so almost all of the action was in the men's rooms. One inherent problem having a large event in a smaller place is that it is not financially reasonable to invest in masses of permanent plumbing for something that lasts 10 days.

I remember going to Wolftrap and watching three lines for the women's rooms and one for the men's and seeing the one go much faster than the other three combined, but even in a casual place sometimes women dress in inconvenient ways to go to the opera. Attire was mostly a lot more utilitarian at the olympiad, which would even up the times some.

HeMateMe: Well, don't believe me, look at the photos. People were wearing coats. people complained about the heating. they are right near the arctic circle and have winter nights in which there is sunlight 11 hours of the day.

waustad: <HeMateMe>Actually it doesn't get dark at all in summer. Maybe you meant that there were 11 hours of night time sun. I remember visiting relatives in Sweden much to the south of this event and seeing it get dark near midnight and seening dawn around 2AM. That wasn't quite at the longest day either, so we are talking closer to 24 of light hrs than 12.

It is interesting seeing the Austrian champs this year where the weather, is a similar issue. It is just a little warmer than it was in Tromso. Last year it was about as hot as Austria ever gets for the event in Vorarlberg, so the attire is not quite the same this time around. Austrian tournaments always seem to be rather casual, but it's very different this time around. When it is 34C outside the vibe is different from 17C like this year.

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